Antigua and Barbuda to Set Up a Cryptocurrency Exchange

The government of Antigua and Barbuda has decided to set up a cryptocurrency exchange.

Authorities in St. John’s want to generate revenue for the nation’s treasury and place the country “on the cutting edge of the new system of creating wealth”. The local parliament is set to review and adopt the relevant legal framework.

Trying to cash in on the global fintech wave, Antigua and Barbuda plans to set up its first cryptocurrency exchange. The legislation needed to create the necessary legal framework is to be introduced in parliament shortly, the local Daily Observer reports.

According to the Minister of Information Technology, Melford Nicholas, the exchange will bring together buyers and sellers facilitating crypto trade for a fee. The government expects that the trading platform will generate non-tax revenue for the budget of the island nation. An official statement reads:

“Antigua and Barbuda is determined to be on the cutting edge of the new system of creating wealth.”

“By establishing an exchange here we will bring Antigua into the game, as it were. Should there be any potential economic spinoffs, we should be in the front seat,” Mr. Nicholas said.

The IT Minister also revealed that Canadian-born businessman Calvin Ayre is one of those involved at the forefront of the new cutting edge technology. The online gambling entrepreneur, who is known for his enthusiasm for cryptos, especially bitcoin cash (BCH), is advising the Antiguan government on cryptocurrency matters.

“Mr. Ayre was appointed as an economic envoy and he is now a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda. We think we can leverage both of those relationships,” said Melford Nicholas.

Last month Calvin Ayre announced intentions to build a $100 million resort at Valley Church beach, Antigua, with profits from his cryptocurrency undertakings. In January he said he was planning to invest in a mining facility dedicated to bitcoin cash. The new resort will accept BCH payments.

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BitBoss – iGaming Blockchain Case Study

It’s no secret that iGaming is big business, but the emergence of technology in the space hasn’t kept pace with the staggering growth the sector has continued to see year over year. Issues related to fairness, trust and transparency continue to plague too many operators, damaging the trust of consumers – and with it – the reputation of the wider industry.

In an effort to address these issues, as well as usher in a new era of interconnectedness between physical casinos and the iGaming sector, Denver-based iGaming company BitBoss have developed a range of technological-based solutions – all built using the power of the Bitcoin SV blockchain.

Bitcoin Association, the global industry body that works to advance business with Bitcoin SV, spoke to BitBoss CEO Matt Dickson about how their innovative blockchain applications in their latest iGaming on Blockchain case study – exploring how a number of their products work, as well as the potential impact they stand to have on the sector.

The standout product amongst BitBoss’ offerings is Bridge – a product designed to digitize the physical casino experience, while facilitating the seamless transition between land-based casinos and online offerings. BitBoss achieves this with a small piece of proprietary technology which costs around $100 and works with almost any slot machine. This enables players to connect their phone to the slot machine, with their casino chips tokenized on the blockchain and stored in a digital wallet. Players can move from machine-to-machine using the tokens stored in their wallet, or effortlessly shift to use it to play online.

‘Our genuine hope is that someday, a casino gambler sits down, uses our technology and has no idea that blockchain was behind it,’ says Matt Dickson, CEO of BitBoss.

‘We purposely designed this product to be backend agnostic – any casino can use it. Now, all of a sudden, your customer has a crypto wallet unbeknownst to them. If they want to cash out from the slot machine, the credits are moved to their phone, which makes it very easy for the casino to offer other services using those credits.’

Should customers choose to transition between the real-world and online casinos, BitBoss has also designed products to bring transparency and provable fairness to iGaming offerings.

‘We have a mobile ecosystem – we develop lottery games, roulette games, poker games, and we have slot machines coming – with all of these integrated very tightly into the crypto wallet’ says Dickson.

‘There are a lot of online casinos out there that seek to cheat people. They may not do it 100% of the time, but they may clip an extra 1 or 2 percent for themselves, Anytime that a player loses, in their mind, they think to themselves “did I get screwed here?” and in a lot of cases, they did!’

BitBoss has a range of offerings which allow iGaming offerings to be played out on the blockchain, which adds a new layer of transparency by directly linking bets to publicly verifiable transactions on the Bitcoin SV blockchain.
‘With the blockchain, all of the transactions are visible for the entire world to see. All of the transactions, once they are on the chain, they can never be changed,’ says Dickson.

‘As a player, if you have a dispute or question about your transactions, you don’t need to call your casino anymore. You can match up the transaction ID in your crypto wallet with a transaction ID on a block explorer, so you can see if your bet made it in time or not. You can see if you bet $20 or $30. It’s a great way to start to move clients in the direction of blockchain because it helps give them more visibility into what’s actually happening.’

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Join FreeBitcoin’s Bitcoin Halving Party

At 7:23 p.m. UTC, on Monday, 11th May 2020, the crypto-community got what it was waiting for.

The highly-anticipated Bitcoin Halving event finally took place. Even though varying degrees of the lockdown affect your plans to properly celebrate the occasion, here’s how you can join the party online:

FreeBitco.in, the oldest-existing bitcoin faucet, is throwing a lockdown-friendly DOUBLING Party where you could stand a chance to win a Lamborghini!

FreeBitco.in’s Bitcoin “Doubling” Party Goes Live on Sunday

The Bitcoin block reward has dropped from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC, and FreeBitco.in is celebrating the event with a Doubling. Let’s go into detail:

The website is currently running a Golden Ticket contest, which entails the following steps:

The more tickets you collect, the higher your chances of winning a Lamborghini. All you have to do is create an account in seconds at FreeBitco.in, and you can join the festivities from 10:00 a.m. UTC on 17th May to 10:00 a.m. UTC on 19th May.

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After relying on Enjin to define items within CryptoFights, Kronoverse has decided to leave Enjin to use its custom Bitcoin SV (BSV) solution for building in-game items. This decision will greatly benefit Kronoverse users who want a reliable system to buy, sell, and trade gear.

Why did Kronoverse choose to leave Enjin?

“We decided to leave because of problems with Ethereum,” said Adam Kling, the CEO, and founder of Kronoverse. “Bitcoin SV is the best choice for us and the value we are working to bring to the esports community.”

Making the decision to transition to BSV was the result of research and development efforts that continued to show that Ethereum was not the best fit for what Kronoverse envisioned. Here are the key issues Kronoverse dealt with when building on Ethereum:

Ethereum is at capacity, slow, can’t scale, and expensive. This is discouraging to gamers who want to buy, sell, and trade in-game items on a frequent basis.

Proof of Work is the only proven consensus mechanism and we lack confidence that PoS/DPoS will work.

What are some of the benefits of transitioning to Bitcoin SV?

As part of its efforts to make in-game item ownership more scalable and accessible to gamers around the world, Kronoverse is turning to BSV as its solution of choice. Kronoverse is creating a better item protocol with BSV.

BSV is also faster and cheaper to conduct trades. This means that players won’t have to worry about racking up ridiculous fees just to do things like trading duplicate items and selling unwanted items. Due to its efficiency, BSV is capable of handling millions of transactions without slowing down. Kronoverse users can have confidence that nothing will go wrong when they’re trading and selling.

Kronoverse users will also be able to use more available features that Enjin isn’t capable of like storing the 3D model of an item. Files can be stored on blockchain similar to Dropbox which is convenient and easy to use. This feature is just one of the many details that will add to the total user experience that gamers will enjoy in the Kronoverse platform.

What does this mean for existing holders of Enjin items?

If you’ve already purchased CryptoFights in-game items, you don’t need to worry. All of your Enjin-based pre-release items will be honored but these tokens will serve as a claim check for BSV tokens. To make this possible, we’re releasing a conversion smart contract in a few months which gives users the ability to melt Enjin items, keep the stored ENJ, and receive an equivalent item usable in CryptoFights.

Introducing the Kronoverse Marketplace

As part of its vision to empower gamers with true item ownership, the Kronoverse Marketplace is slated to be available for later this year. All users will be able to sell unwanted items for profit. Kronoverse users will also be able to trade with other players to find the in-game gear they want and need.

Whether you buy or win an item, it’s automatically added to your Kronoverse wallet as soon as you acquire it. Your mobile wallet app makes it easy to read any item’s description, stats (i.e. rarity, value, type, and which games it’s compatible with). Each item also has its own history that provides the original ownership, when it has been listed for sale and all previous owners of the item.

Another way users can benefit from the marketplace is the list of wanted items and items for sale. Logging into the Kronoverse system allows you to see your own items, balance, and make trades using items or cash. You can also start a trade listing with multiple items or seek rare items for a cash reward.

What’s next?

Within the next couple of weeks, the launch date for the CryptoFights open beta will be announced. The open beta will be available on Android and will be free to play. It’ll give you the chance to experience the latest updates, improved gameplay, and test out your skills against other players around the world.

When the full game and the Marketplace is released later this year, everyone will experience the power and benefits that come from transitioning Kronoverse to BSV.

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